How to Check Your Computer History

The history provides a list of the websites that have been viewed from your computer. For safety reasons, we recommend that parents review their computer's history to stay informed of the places their children visit online. (If the history is consistently empty, it is possible that either your child is deliberately erasing the history to keep you from finding out where they go online, or perhaps your computer is set up to automatically delete the history each time you exit out of the Internet. We recommend that you disable the auto-delete feature).

To check your computer's history, follow these steps:

• Find the long narrow box (called a Navigation Bar) at the top of the screen where the web addresses can be entered.

• To the right of this box, is a little drop down menu with an arrow. By clicking on the arrow, you can see a list of the different websites that have been viewed from your computer.

• AOL automatically saves the last 300 sites visited.

• Internet Explorer can be customized to report a list of the places visited in the last 999 days.

• After you view all the entries in your computer's history, you can clear it.

ARE THERE OTHER WAYS TO STAY INFORMED OF ABOUT WHAT MY CHILDREN ARE DOING ONLINE?

Beyond checking your computer's history, you can also search your computer for any pictures that have been downloaded from e-mails or the Internet.

To look for downloaded photos or images, follow these steps:

• Click on your computer's Start menu (look for the big word "start" at the bottom left of the screen.

• Click on Programs or All Programs.

• Click on Accessories.

• Now click on System Tools and finally click on Disk Clean Up.

• When you click on Disk Clean Up, a window will pop up to tell you whether there are any items stored in the category of Temporary Internet Files, and then select View Files lower down in the box, you will see a row of documents or folders. By clicking on these, you can quickly find out if any photos or images have been downloaded to your computer. To erase the contents of Temporary Internet Files, just go back to the Disk Clean Up window and click OK.

It is also a good idea to check the Recycle Bin on your computer to see if your children have discarded anything that you need to know about.